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Dan Mollers Governing Least: A New England Libertarianism is one of my favorite books on libertarian philosophy. In it, he discusses one idea that I think is underrated, and deserves to be highlighted. The idea is what he calls residual obligations.

First, Mollers approach to libertarianism is not based on a hardline approach like many associate with Rand or Rothbard. Moller does not think in terms of exceptionless rules, or rights that are inviolable in all circumstances. He acknowledges that sometimes, rights violations can be justified. Suppose I find myself in the following scenario:

I am hiking on a mountain pass and have become trapped in a massive snowstorm. My life is in peril if I cannot find shelter and food. Luckily, I stumble across an unoccupied hunting cabin. The cabin is clearly marked with Keep Out and Private Property signs. However, I can easily break into the cabin and take shelter against the storm until it has passed, saving my life at the cost of causing some property damage to someone else.

People with an absolutist view of rights might argue that Im morally obligated to stay outside and freeze to death. Common sense morality, however, says this is a case where its permissible to violate someones property rights. However, Moller points out whats often overlooked is that a rights violation being justified isnt the end of the moral analysis. Too many people speak as if overriding a right necessarily means the same things as erasing the right altogether. But this is a mistake. As Moller puts it, an overridden right is not a deactivated right. A justified rights violation is still a rights violation. The reasons that exist to avoid harming someone, though overridden, have not ceased to exist, and harm was still caused to someone who did not deserve it.

As a result, Moller says, the overridden reason to avoid harming you still being in effect produces residual obligations for me. If you see that Ive broken your cabin window and taken some of the supplies you kept stored in there, would be wrong of me to merely shrug and say well, the emergency situation I was in overruled your property rights, so unfortunately for you, this is all your problem. Instead, I now have some residual obligations to you. Moller suggests these obligations include restitution if I caused $300 worth of damage to your cabin in order to break in, I should repay you for the damage. There is a further obligation of compensation to the extent that you are otherwise harmed by my actions, and I should take efforts to compensate you for those harms. I should express sympathy even though my action may have been justified, it was still regrettable, and it still caused harm to you, and for me to treat that as a matter of indifference would be wrong. And there is an obligation of responsibility which is not just backward looking, but forward-looking.

The forward-looking nature of responsibility is of particular interest. For example, if the mountain pass in the above thought experiment was widely known to be a hazardous place to hike, and I also knew that there was a major snowstorm coming in, and could have easily anticipated that taking a hike that day could place me in a situation where I might need to break into someone elses cabin in order to survive, that gives me a strong obligation to avoid putting myself in that scenario in the first place. As Moller puts it, If I can reasonably foresee that some action of mine will put me in the position of facing an emergency that will then render it permissible to harm you, I must take responsibility to avoid such actions of possible. I should not think that I have less reason to take responsibility because I can avoid harms by transferring them to you instead. And failing to take responsibility weakens my claim to impose costs on others when the time comes.

I think this is basically right. If I had been the hypothetical hiker above and was later trying to take moral inventory of my life, I wouldnt find myself thinking If only I had been a better, more moral person, Id actually be dead already. Id have had the decency to do the morally correct thing, and Id have frozen to death outside that cabin years ago. But if I failed to live up to my residual obligations, and never attempted to make things up to the cabin owner, I would feel like I had done something wrong to that extent. As Ive written before, I dont want to be the kind of person who feels comfortable with making others bear the costs of my choices, or of my misfortunes. As Moller phrased it, the core impulse isnt outrage about being asked to give, it is in the first instance a bewilderment at the suggestion that we are entitled to demand. And Moller goes on to argue, persuasively in my view, that if we recognize even modest strictures on making others worse off to improve our lot then we quickly run into a form of libertarianism.

A simple question we should all ask ourselves about any belief we hold is If I was wrong about this, how would I know it? What would it actually take to convince me that Im mistaken? If you cant answer that question, that should be a big red flag. This is hardly an original observation on my part, of course. Eliezer Yudkowsky, for example has written that a belief is only reallyworthwhileif you could, in principle, be persuaded to believe otherwise. If your retina ended up in the same state regardless of what light entered it, you would be blind. Similarly, if your mind ends up in the same state regardless of the evidence or arguments you encounter, then intellectually you have been blinded as effectively as by poking out your eyeballs. To illustrate the point, Yudkowsky goes on to say this holds true even for things as basic as 2+2 = 4, and that he finds it quite easy to imagine a situation which wouldconvinceme that 2 + 2 = 3.

So, what would it take to convince me I was wrong about the moral argument for libertarianism? Well, as mentioned, I dont think its right of me to demand and compel other people to carry the costs of my actions or my misfortunes. If someone could provide me with a convincing argument that I would become a better, more moral person if I did adopt such a belief and began to act in accordance with it, that would in turn convince me I was wrong about the moral argument for libertarianism.

What about you, EconLog readers? Whats a core belief you hold, and what would it take to convince you that you were mistaken about it?

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Residual Obligations And The Morality of Libertarianism - Econlib

Reason magazine has an article that argues for the existence of free will. I dont plan to debate that issue, but I am a bit disturbed by the implicit claim that the argument for libertarianism is stronger in a world with free will than in a world of determinism. If thats their argument, its clearly wrong. The argument for libertarianism has nothing to do with the existence or non-existence of free will. Heres Reason:

What is free will? Can a being whose brain is made up of physical stuff actually make undetermined choices?

InFree Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will, the Trinity College Dublin neuroscientist Kevin J. Mitchell argues that evolution has shaped living creatures such that we can push back when the physical world impinges upon us. The motions of nonliving thingsair, rocks, planets, starsare entirely governed by physical forces; they move where they are pushed. Our ability to push back, Mitchell argues, allows increasingly complex creatures to function as agents that can make real choices, not choices that are predetermined by the flux of atoms.

Sorry, but choices made by the flux of atoms in peoples brains are real choices, regardless of whether people have free will or not. Determinists dont argue that people dont make real choices, they argue that the outcome of those choices is determined by a mix of brain chemistry and external stimuli. Libertarian determinists favor a free society because they believe that better choices will be made if governments dont impose regulations that prevent people from making choices that their mix of brain chemistry and external stimuli view as being in their interest. The term freedom in a free will sense is vastly different from freedom in a political sense.

Reason continues:

How can that be? After all, just like air and rocks, bacteria and sharks and aardvarks and people are made of physical stuff.Determinismholds that, per the causal laws of nature, the unfolding of the universe is inexorable and unbranching, such that it can have only one past and one future. Human beings do not escape the laws of nature, so any and all of our choices have been predetermined from the beginning of the universe.

This view poses a moral problem: How can people be held accountable for their actions if they had no choice but to behave the way they did?

This is a non-sequitur. We hold people accountable because doing so provides an external stimuli that nudges their decisions in a more socially optimal direction. Thus we threaten potential bank robbers with long prison terms in order to deter people from robbing banks. Those deterrents make people less likely to rob banks, regardless of whether the free will or the determinist position is true. Even if determinism were shown to be true, we would not legalize murder on the mistaken assumption that killers should not be held accountable.

Its dangerous to tie your ideology to scientific models that might be discredited. Some progressives deny that there are innate differences in IQ. Wiser progressives argue that their ideology makes sense even if innate IQ differences exist. In the old days, some Christians denied that the Earth went around the sun. When this view was discredited, it pushed some scientists toward atheism. I would hate to see libertarians tie their ideology to the hypothesis of free will. If determinism were later shown to be true, this would (unfairly) tend to discredit libertarianism.

In my view, a free society is best regardless of whether decisions are made by individuals with free will, or brains in flux responding to external stimuli.

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Libertarianism and free will - Econlib

One item stood out at last weeks Republican presidential primary debate: There was not an explicitly nor implicitly identified libertarian candidate. Ron Paul represented the libertarian faction in Republican debates in 2008 and 2012, and his son Rand Paul assumed the mantle in 2016. Prior libertarian-leaning Republican primary candidates include Barry Goldwater in 1964, Jack Kemp in 1988, and Steve Forbes in 1996 and 2000, yet no such candidate can claim the position in this years Republican primary. The lack of a libertarian candidate is emblematic of the rights shift away from free-market fundamentalism and toward a more robust social conservatism.

My own ideological evolution is demonstrative of the rights shift away from libertarianism. Eight years ago, The Federalist published my essay making the Christian case for libertarianism. At the time, libertarianism seemed ascendant in contemporary politics. The New York Times wondered aloud if Americas libertarian moment had arrived, and Time Magazine featured Sen. Rand Paul on its cover describing him as The Most Interesting Man in Politics. But libertarianisms political triumph was short-lived.

There are many possible reasons for this shift away from libertarianism, but among the most decisive were the disruptive events of the Covid-19 pandemic. Americas response to the pandemic exposed two fundamental truths that libertarianism was ill-equipped to answer: First, our institutions have been seized by ideological activists who have weaponized them against core American values; second, the left is on an evangelizing mission to impose its values across society unless resisted.

Covid exposed the deep moral rot of key institutions, such as academia, journalism, science and medicine, and corporations, among many others. In a liberal society, these institutions play a vital role in tempering concentrated political power by serving as neutral actors leveraging their unique expertise and interests to better society. During the pandemic, however, these institutions revealed themselves as political activists weaponizing their unique positions of authority to enact the lefts political agenda.

This rot was evident when public health officials published a public letter during the height of the pandemic insisting that the George Floyd riots did not violate their previously asserted guidance against mass gatherings because the rioters were rioting for a supposedly virtuous cause. This letter exposed those bureaucrats as mere political activists rather than the neutral experts they claim to be.

When critical race theory (CRT) became a polarizing, mainstream issue, many libertarians claimed CRT was protected by academic freedom. But thats not true. Public school curriculums are inherently political because public officials ultimately decide what is taught in a public school. But for decades, curricula have been developed by progressives leading to a left-wing indoctrination of students evident in declining civic knowledge and patriotism.

The activist takeover of institutions allows leftists an additional avenue to exercise political power without ever explicitly enacting legislation. Therefore, conservatives must be willing to cripple their ability to exercise power by either externally dismantling these institutions or through their own hostile takeover. Neutrality toward these corrupt institutions will only allow the left to continue to subvert conservatives political interests.

Recent years have also made it clear that the left wont leave you alone. Leftists have a missionary zeal to impose their mores upon society. Again, the George Floyd riots are demonstrative. In their aftermath, the left demanded that you demonstrate your solidarity with leftist social causes or else youre complicit in systemic racism.

Lavishly funded diversity, equity, and inclusion consultants infiltrated corporate boardrooms to inject racial identity politics into the workplace. Then the left came for your children, secretly using public schools to compel children into experimental mutilation under the guise of gender theory. Parents who objected to this radicalism were deemed domestic terrorists or threatened by Child Protective Services. There is nowhere to hide. Leftists insist on your acquiescence.

The lefts cultural aggression is a product of the rights refusal to assert our own cultural values. Adherence to a neutral public sphere under the guise of secularism only creates a vacuum for the left to leverage the powers of the state to promote their own values. When the state stopped promoting traditional Christian values, the left filled the void by promoting cultural Marxism.

A less libertarian conservatism must leverage tools such as public school curricula, public television, military ethics training, and other professional training in the bureaucracy, etc. to educate Americans on traditional virtues.

Institutional rot and the lefts missionary zeal thus resurface a timeless wisdom: Liberty requires virtue. Absent said virtue, institutions and culture will inevitably culminate in tyranny and social disorder. In recent years, conservatives have relearned that a culture cannot sustain degradation without catastrophic effects to individual liberty. By contrast, libertarianism is at best agnostic on the need for a state to cultivate individual virtue.

Social righteousness as a prerequisite for liberty is an insight our Founding Fathers understood. In his farewell address, George Washington implored that America must be a virtuous nation for the republic to endure. He wrote:

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Of course, libertarians and the left will accuse conservatives of wanting to enact a Christian theocracy, but thats a lazy smear. Again, George Washington is illustrative. In his first annual address to Congress, President Washington wrote that Americans must understand the difference between order and oppression, and also liberty and licentiousness. He wrote:

by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of Society; to discriminate the spirit of Liberty from that of licentiousness, cherishing the first, avoiding the last

Libertarianism fails to heed Washingtons advice by mistaking all encroachments on personal behavior as oppression. On the contrary, the conservative appreciates that in a free society, the state must proactively promote social virtue to prevent society from descending into cultural degradation. Disorder and licentiousness inevitably result in tyranny.

Despite these critiques, libertarianism still offers a lot to the right. The free market remains the greatest path toward material prosperity, and the rights ability to promote wealth creation is among our biggest political advantages that should not be ceded. But of course, conservatisms goal is about more than material wealth. Rather, its about shaping the conditions for human fulfillment. Any such new fusionism between libertarians and conservatives requires finding libertarian solutions to conservative objectives.

For example, among the rights policy priorities is to rebuild the natural family. While this can be done via the tax code through an expanded earned income tax credit, or paid family leave policies, libertarians might help deregulate childcare services to drive down the cost of childcare.

Surely there are plenty of ways libertarians and conservatives can and should find common cause, but any shared agenda between libertarians and conservatives must aim toward retaking institutions, restoring social virtue, and rebuilding the family. Absent those objectives, libertarianism offers little to the right in our current political moment. Americas current state is characterized by cultural decadence and institutional rot that can only be remedied by an aggressive conservative agenda unafraid to assert its values throughout society.

Brian Hawkins is the policy coordinator at the American Legislative Exchange Council. Brian graduated from Azusa Pacific University in 2011 with a BA in political science. Upon graduation, Brian commissioned into the U.S. Army, where he deployed to South Korea and Afghanistan. The views expressed are his own.

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Libertarianism Is Ill-Equipped For The Task Of Saving America - The Federalist

Ohio is not a swing state, not any longer. Donald Trump won it by eight points, twice. It has a Republican governor, and while its senators are split between the parties, its U.S. House delegation is made up of 10 Republicans and five Democrats. And yet Ohio just passed an abortion-rights referendum by a margin of more than 13 points.

Theres no way to spin this result. Theres no way to spin every other pro-choice result in every other red-state referendum. The pro-life movement is in a state of electoral collapse, and I think I know one reason.

In the eight years since the so-called New Right emerged on the scene and Trump began to dominate the Republican landscape, the Republican Party has become less libertarian but more libertine, and libertinism is ultimately incompatible with a holistic pro-life worldview.

Im not arguing that the pro-choice position is inherently libertine. There are many millions of Americans including pro-choice Republicans who arrive at their position through genuine philosophical disagreement with the idea that an unborn child possesses the same inherent worth as anyone else. But Ive seen Republican libertinism with my own eyes. I know that it distorts the culture of the Republican Party and red America.

The difference between libertarianism and libertinism can be summed up as the difference between rights and desires. A libertarian is concerned with her own liberty but also knows that this liberty ends where yours begins. The entire philosophy of libertarianism depends on a healthy recognition of human dignity. A healthy libertarianism can still be individualistic, but its also deeply concerned with both personal virtue and the rights of others. Not all libertarians are pro-life, but a pro-life libertarian will recognize the humanity and dignity of both mother and child.

A libertine, by contrast, is dominated by his desires. The object of his life is to do what he wants, and the object of politics is to give him what he wants. A libertarian is concerned with all forms of state coercion. A libertine rejects any attempt to coerce him personally, but hes happy to coerce others if that gives him what he wants.

Donald Trump is the consummate libertine. He rejects restraints on his appetites and accountability for his actions. The guiding principle of his worldview is summed up with a simple declaration: I do what I want. Any movement built in his image will be libertine as well.

Trumps movement dismisses the value of personal character. It mocks personal restraint. And its happy to inflict its will on others if that achieves what it wants. Libertarianism says that your rights are more important than my desires. Libertinism says my desires are more important than your rights, and this means that libertines are terrible ambassadors for any cause that requires self-sacrifice.

I dont think the pro-life movement has fully reckoned with the political and cultural fallout from the libertine right-wing response to the Covid pandemic. Here was a movement that was loudly telling women that they had to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, with all the physical transformations, risks and financial uncertainties that come with pregnancy and childbirth, at the same time that millions of its members were also loudly refusing the minor inconveniences of masking and the low risks of vaccination even if the best science available at the time told us that both masking and vaccination could help protect others from getting the disease.

Even worse, many of the same people demanded that the state limit the liberty of others so that they could live how they wanted. Florida, for example, banned private corporate vaccine mandates.

This do-what-you-want ethos cost a staggering number of American lives. A 2022 study found that there were an estimated 318,981 vaccine-preventable deaths from January 2021 to April 2022. Vaccine hesitancy was so concentrated in Republican America that political affiliation was more relevant than race and ethnicity as an indicator of willingness to take the vaccine. Now theres evidence from Ohio and Florida that excess mortality rates were significantly higher for Republicans than Democrats after vaccines were widely available.

And this is the party thats now going to tell American women that respect for human life requires personal sacrifice?

Its not just that libertinism robs Republicans of moral authority; its that libertinism robs Republicans of moral principle. The pro-life movement could fail so decisively in Ohio only if Republicans voted against abortion restrictions. The same analysis applies to the movements ballot referendum losses in pro-Trump states like Kansas, Montana and Kentucky.

In each state, all the pro-life movement needed was consistent Republican support, and it would have sailed to victory. All the Democrats in the state could have voted to protect abortion rights, and they would have lost if Republicans held firm. But they did not.

Do as I say and not as I do is among the worst moral arguments imaginable. A holistic pro-life society requires true self-sacrifice. It asks women to value the life growing inside of them even in the face of fear and poverty. It asks the community to rally beside these women to keep them and their children safe and to provide them with opportunities to flourish. It requires both individuals and communities to sublimate their own desires to protect the lives and opportunities of others.

As the Republican Party grows more libertine, the pro-life movement is going to keep losing. Of course, its going to keep losing with Democrats and independents, many of whom have always been skeptical of pro-life moral and legal arguments. But its also going to lose in the Republican Party itself, a party that is increasingly dedicated to outright defiance.

An ethos that centers individuals desires will bleed over into matters of life and death. It did during Covid, and its doing so now, as even Republicans reject the pro-life cause.

The challenge for pro-life America isnt simply to raise more money or use better talking points. As Republican losses in Virginia demonstrate, advocating even a relatively mild abortion ban a 15-week law, not a so-called heartbeat six-week bill is fraught. The challenge is much more profound. Pro-life America has to reconnect with personal virtue. It has to model self-sacrifice. It has to show, not just tell, America what it would look like to value life from conception to natural death.

At present, however, the Republican Party is dominated by its id. It indulges its desires. And so long as its id is in control, the pro-life movement will fail. There is no selfish path to a culture of life.

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Opinion | The New Republican Party Isn't Ready for the Post-Roe World - The New York Times

In the chill of November 1969, a collective heartbeat resonated through the United States. The March Against Death, a historic moment in the anti-war movement, drew over half a million Americans to the heart of Washington, DC, demanding an end to the Vietnam War. As we reflect on the echoes of that pivotal weekend 54 years later, it becomes painfully clear that the cry for peace still rings in our conscience. Today, in the face of continued conflict, the Libertarian Party emerges as the modern-day torchbearer, standing alone in its unwavering call for a moratorium on war.

The March Against Death remains etched in history as a poignant expression of national unity against the backdrop of a divisive war. It was a time when people from all walks of life, fueled by grief and determination, came together to demand change. Today, as we navigate a world still embroiled in conflict, the spirit of those marchers lives on in the Libertarian Party.

Over the past 54 years, the landscape of American politics has witnessed the rise and fall of administrations, yet one unfortunate constant endures: both Republicans and Democrats have repeatedly voted to send our sons and daughters into wars that often have little to do with our own national defense. From Vietnam to the Middle East, the cycle persists, and the toll on American lives and global stability is immeasurable.

In this sea of bipartisan Warhawks, the Libertarian Party stands as a solitary voice advocating for an end to our involvement in wars. Rooted in the principles of individual liberty and non-intervention, our values challenge the status quo, offering a vision of a nation that prioritizes diplomacy over aggression. As the only political force echoing the sentiments of the March Against Death, the Libertarian Party shoulders the responsibility of carrying the torch for peace into the 21st century.

Looking forward, the Libertarian Party is gearing up for a series of anti-war events across the country in 2024. These gatherings will serve as platforms for like-minded individuals to rally against unnecessary conflicts, echoing the sentiments of the historic march that shook the nation in 1969. Its a call to action, a plea for a return to a foreign policy that values human lives over geopolitical posturing.

As we reflect on the legacy of the March Against Death, let us rally behind our Partys call for a stop to war. In 2024, let our voices be heard, demanding an end to the needless sacrifice of our sons and daughters on foreign soil. Visit lp.org/donate and contribute to a cause that seeks to reshape our nations approach to global conflicts. Together, let us carry forward the torch of peace from one generation to the next, ensuring that the cry for an end to war remains an eternal anthem for a better, more harmonious world.

So, are you already against the next war?

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From the March Against Death to the Libertarian Cry for Peace - Libertarian Party